Monica has posted a RevGals Friday Five about school favorites. I think that sixth grade might have been my favorite year ever, so I will start with sixth grade answers:

What was your favorite thing about school? Biology! That year we learned about amoebae and euglenas and we dissected a frog and I decided to be a doctor. I loved it!

Who was your most memorable teacher? Mr. Curran, of course, our classroom teacher who rose above the limitations of our very small rural school. (Did we even have an official science curriculum?)

With whom did you sit at lunch? Probably Sarah. We ate as fast as we could and bolted for the blacktop outside which passed as our basketball court. (And were laughed at when we suggested a girls’ basketball team.)

What is/was your favorite school supply? Our textbooks. I loved our green world history book, which was filled with news from the ancient world.

What do you think “kids these days” are missing out on? The simplicity of the demands made upon us. We lived out in the country, and lessons and sports and other after-school activities mostly didn’t happen. We rode the bus home after school and went outside to play.

But then, there was my senior year of high school, in a girls’ boarding school in Massachusetts. More answers!

What was your favorite thing about school? Late evenings in the basement “smoker.” Believe it or not, smoking in specified locales was a senior privilege. We set up the laundry room with our tables and typewriters (LOL!) and notebooks and stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, writing our papers and talking ~ and smoking, of course.

Who was your most memorable teacher? That year it was probably my religion teacher, Mr. Smalley. Later I would learn that he, like many of our religion teachers, was ordained and in possession of a doctorate. The class was “Church and Society,” and it was where I first read Freud and Bonhoeffer. He was also the teacher who told me not to be so parochial with my college choices and to get out of New England. (He was right, but I didn’t listen.)

With whom did you sit at lunch? We had assigned tables which rotated periodically.

What do you think “kids these days” are missing out on? My high school experiences were fairly unusual. I think that I am most grateful for the education we received in choral music (religious school, mandatory chapel).

And most recently there was seminary, which I attended in my fifties, commuting to Pittsburgh a couple of times a week from my home in Cleveland. Another set of answers!

What was your favorite thing about school? Actually, it was probably the long walks I took through the Highland Park neighborhood every day.

Who was your most memorable teacher? Edwin van Driel, who showed up at the end of my second year and articulated an approach to Christianity that addressed a lot of my own “issues.” He would eventually preach at my ordination service

With whom did you sit at lunch? Cindy and Scott, two people whom I met in the first weeks of school and who became my best seminary friends.

What is/was your favorite school supply? My laptop, of course. (Definitely NOT the Hebrew and Greek flashcards over which I labored for so many long hours!)

What do you think “kids these days” are missing out on? They aren’t kids, are they? But I think the seminary education is getting better and better, so they aren’t missing out on anything. Except time ~ enough time to absorb it all.

Truthfully, I love school so much that I would go back for a D.Min. if I could!

2 thoughts on “Friday Five Back to School Edition”

That was a creative way to play the Friday Five.
I was a bus rider as well. The bus picked us up at the grade school/middle school and then traveled to the high school. I was always fearful of missing the bus.